You can’t keep the lid on a great feeling forever, and according to my friend it wasn’t long before everyone involved began to talk the project up in-house, and that soon got them talking out of house too. Then the trade rags caught a whiff of the story and sought an interview. After a spot on the front page of Compu-Diddly-Doo, the business world decided it was time to take an interest, which prompted Reg to employ a PR company, who in turn procured valuable column space in the ‘Who’s Hot and Who’s Not’ section of the Financial Times. Imagine that – Reg’s well-honed bushlit gracing the pages of the FT! Once the excitement hit the broadsheets, even Babyface lightened up – and suddenly, bang! Before anyone knew what was happening, the whole company and their friends and relatives were caught up in the drama. It was the mid-Eighties, the housing boom was in full swing with no end in sight, the city was full of expensive cars, the champagne bottles came clinking one after another, seemingly without end; life was good and about to get even better. The staff became convinced that Bwain were going to make millions and when Reg began talking flash company cars and shares options for all, that was it: everyone including the cleaner was thoroughly sucked into his dream.

“It was a fabulous feeling, a fantastic time to be alive, like being part of a hit West-end show.” Bleep raised his empty glass and stared through half closed eyelids. “Gin,” he stammered. “Get me gin.”

I duly complied, returning with a matching pair of double gee and tees, knowing it would take a lot more alcohol than this to see the story through to its conclusion.

“Hoover,” smiled Reg, “I have need of your unique talents once again. In my lock-up in the East End – the BIG one, not the small one – you’ll find two hundred brand-new PC cases in their boxes.”

“Yes, boss,” replied Hoover, looking craftily from side to side like a cheap sewer rat covered in expensive, reclaimed bling. “These ‘puta cases, what should I do wiv ‘em?”

“I want you to purchase two hundred second-hand PCs, the cheapest you can find, and fit the innards into the new cases.”

“The ole one-two-switcharoo. Posh.”

“I need them all working within the week.”

“I know a couple of blokes in the twilight removals business, right up their street.”

“Drop by the office tomorrow. I’ll lend you one of our engineers and get him to assemble the appropriate literature from our extensive design library.”

“Extensive design library?” I guffawed, choking on a fragment of ice cube.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” said Reg, winking, “I’ve always been rather liberal with the truth. Now, the engineer I assigned to shadow Hoover was none other than your old pal Bleep. Isn’t that right Bleep.”

“It sure is,” said Bleep, switching back to his own voice. “While Babyface got cracking with the code, I worked on the hardware specs and the configuration files. By the time Hoover arrived, I was well ready.”

“Bleepy Boy, wot I require is some books about networks,” demanded Hoover, “Wiv big pictures, just like the old washing machine repair manuals. Did I tell you I cut me teeth on washing machines?”

“Several times,” retorted Bleep.

“If you can do washing machines, my feory is you can do anyfink,” said Hoover. “The world is yer hoister. I ad a word wiv my ole mucker Reg, and he’s agreed we can build the server ‘putas too. Ain’t that sumfink?”

“That’s my job.”

“You can elp if you like, but you’re not to interfere,” said Hoover, slipping a pony in Bleep’s pocket. “And you’re not to tell Reg any of our trade secrets. Aris and Eino don’t like it when their secrets is spilled, they take it very bad.”

“Too right,” said a voice from the doorway, belonging to a beanpole of a man, clad in overalls a couple of sizes too small, zipper down to his waist, displaying a faded ‘Pub Quiz team of the year’ tee shirt beneath. “Cept I don’t like being called Aris, it sounds cheap. To you my good man, it’s Aristotle.”

“And I’m Einstein,” said a short swarthy chap with mad hair, clad in overalls a size to large. He smiled and held out a thick, calloused hand in greeting.

“Bleep,” said Bleep, swapping voices and shaking his own hand.

“Nah we’re all ‘ere,” said Hoover, “it’s dahn to business. We need pictures, specs and a dawg.”

“What kind of dog?” asked Bleep suspiciously.

“A white one wiv a handset, you dodo. I can’t be calling me mates on a Cocker spaniel, now can I? They’d think I woz some kind of ponce.”

Despite being a technology company, technology really wasn’t the Large brothers’ forte and Ronnie, finding computers quite unscarable took a back seat when it came to the nuts and bolts of business, trusting Reg, who was only a shade more technically literate than he, to get on with the job of securing the profits. Hoover was ordered to scrimp and save wherever he could, with an index-linked bonus for bringing the hardware in as cheap as humanly possible. It was, therefore, no great surprise to discover that the grey hardware with new cases wasn’t so much grey on the inside as a shade of red-hot crimson, purloined as it was from a network of spivs who plied their trade in the backrooms of a number of well known city pubs. From every available source the dodgy hardware came: some lost off the backs of lorries, some from the fronts of trade stands; hot-standby spares that mysteriously went missing from trading room floors, unopened boxes purloined by RAM raiders in the dead of night – all this and more passed through the dealers’ shady hands. For Reg’s order, which was bigger than most, the bulk of the equipment was rescued from the Crusher – the final resting place for decrepit ex-government machines, well past their sell by date. Condemned to death due to the confidential contents of their hard drives, it really was a waste of perfectly good if underperforming tin. Being government putas, the hard drives in question were remarkably small and it was well known in Spiv circles that they hardly ever held confidential data, which was why the man in charge of the big red lever looked the other way when the hardware was replaced at the last with a box of underperforming pink fluffy rabbits with broken hoppity springs. Government being government, Spivnet knew no-one would notice the discrepancy in weight or pinkness just as long as the forms were completed without spelling mistakes, on time, in black ink.

My friend supposed that Reg wasn’t fully aware how crap the solution his corner cutting contractors were pulling together really was, but then Reg was a big picture salesman with no attention to detail. There’s no doubt he intended to save money to make money, but whether he planned on shaving off all the corners on offer to create himself a round table remains open to debate. By the time Hoover and his gang had finished building all the ‘putas, Bleep had a pocketful of ponies, one per objection, which made it impossible for him to objectively object to anything. The 12 line-servers at the heart of the system had already been given triple bypass surgery courtesy of Babyface, and even though Bleep tried really hard, they were soon abused further. For good measure, Hoover installed an extra loud fan to hide the fact that one of the ex-Whitehall disk drives had developed a high pitch pig-like squeal whenever it was stressed, which due to Babyface’s design was more often than not.

Bleep lit another smoke, handed me the pack and took a long, hard drag. “After we’d built the special servers, that’s when things went really queer and IT happened.”